
He looks so much better with the bolts OUT of his neck

Fruit Bats

Total Treatness
It has been a few years since I had grapes to harvest. When I reroofed the house four years ago, I had to cut the vine way back. Last year I had a small batch that I cooked down into jam because it was the last time my sweet blackberry boy pug ate them. He was like a truffle sniffing hog in the fall. Morbid, but I still have four little jars stashed in my cupboard. I will probably always keep them. This year was a bounty. Beautiful dark violet blue orbs hung thickly twisted around the old vine. The aroma hung in the air from twenty feet away. Grapey grape.
Last Monday I took the bunches, cutting them with my micro Leatherman with precision, leaving a few hanging for the winter creatures. A sweet treat in a barren landscape. The next day I hauled them all up to my parents house. We washed and destemmed them, cooked them, mashed them, strained them.
My cute first little 36 jars remained a syrup. Bah. All of that work for nothing. The other 19 jars(the ones I went to the store for) are nice and jam-like. It seems nothing like the jam I made before the vine was ever trimmed back for construction.



I love my little pug girl. She looks like a loaf of marbled rye. She's so sweet and demure yet to be honest, she's a humper. I have morphed their names into Gingerella and Franco(pronounce it with GUSTO like a red wine swilling, cigarillo smoking Sophia Loren). Sounds good, no? At this point The Chidler is Carlito. Franco likes to keep the Carlito's salami spic and span. So I wonder, who's the bitch? Since I've taken these pictures, especially the last one, I just can't get Alphabet St. out of my head. It's been a few days now without relief. You know how the old children's rhyme goes: